Travelport makes inroads in India, signs up with Jet Airways & Air India

Travelport, a travel commerce platform is making inroads in India. Over the last one week it has announced a long-term partnership with Jet Airways and Air India.

The long-term supplier agreement with Jet Airways will be effective from April 2019 and will enable the airline to sell its inventory to online and offline travel agencies around the world to shop, book and manage itineraries. This also includes flights which are operated by partner airlines but sold by Jet Airways with “9W” code.

Earlier this week, Travelport won a tender floated by Air India for becoming its sole distribution partner for domestic flight content in India. The deal comes into effect from November 2018 and will take over 12 months for complete implementation. This will give the airline the ability to show graphical content, multiple fare families and sell all ancillary products.

Both the airlines are struggling financially and while Air India is looking up to the government to bail it out, Jet Airways has been exploring options to raise funds. The Travelport platform will help the airlines sell the same content which the airlines sell on their direct selling channels (Website / Call Centre / City Offices). A modern distribution channel like Travelport offers combination of ancillary products and graphical content which is not possible on traditional GDS (Global Distribution Systems)

Incidentally, Travelport partners with InterGlobe Technology Quotient (Interglobe group) in India. Interglobe is the parent of IndiGo airlines – which itself signed a deal with Travelport in 2016 to increase its distribution prowess.

Travelport has been working with MakeMyTrip, Ibibo, Yatra and Cleartrip along with some major corporate travel agencies as well as newer entrants like PayTM. The company is slowly making inroads into hotel industry with deals with Oberoi and Taj group – as these chains face a similar challenge like airlines, that of reducing distribution costs.

Over a period of time, both Jet Airways and Air India are likely to see savings on Distribution costs which will be a boon in the rising fuel price environment.